I shall not read to the Tribunal the 70 pages of this report, but I should like to read certain paragraphs which I think may interest the Tribunal. Here is the first page. To begin with, it is entitled, “The Jewish Question in France and Its Treatment. Paris, 1 July 1941.” First page:
“Final solution of the Jewish question—this is the heading and the goal for the work of those services of the Sipo and SD which are handling the Jewish problem in France. It has always been clear that practical results cannot be achieved without a study of the political situation in general as well as of the situation of the Jews.
“The following pages, next to giving a general draft of our planning, are to explain the results achieved up to now as well as the immediate aims.
“Everything touching the principle must be considered from the following point of view: Since the chief of the Sipo and SD has been charged by the Führer with preparing the solution of the Jewish question in Europe, his offices in France are to carry out the preliminary work in order to be able to serve abroad as the absolutely reliable agents of the European Commissioner for Jewish Affairs, at the appointed time.”
I shall now point out to the Tribunal the chief headings of the paragraphs in order to pursue the development of the idea and of the operations of this German office.
THE PRESIDENT: I was considering, M. Faure, why this document has not got any identifying mark upon it. I mean, of course, we do not doubt for an instant what you say to us is true, but at the same time it is not the correct way to do it—for us to have to rely on counsel’s statement as to the nature of the evidence. And there is nothing on the document itself to show that it was captured in Paris or to show what it is except what it states.
M. FAURE: Mr. President, the joining of this document to the file of the French Prosecution was done by a report made in Paris, which I shall present before the Tribunal, because as this report concerns a certain number of documents, it was not especially joined to the file of this particular document. On the other hand, when I received these documents from the police, I did not wish to write anything on the document or to place it under a seal, for I wished to avoid altering the normal appearance of the document in any way.
I must state that if the Tribunal prefers not to receive this document inasmuch as I do recognize that it does not bear a signature, I shall not submit the document for I have a second report by Dannecker which is signed by him. I submitted both in order to make clear the continuity of the operation.
THE PRESIDENT: M. Faure, in the case of the documents presented by the United States, the captured documents by the United States, as Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe reminded us the other day, there is an affidavit, I think, of Major Coogan, which states that all those documents of a certain series, PS, L, R, and various other series, were all captured in Germany by the United States forces. If there were such an affidavit with reference to documents captured in Paris which might be identified by some letter such as PS or some letter similar to that, the matter would seem to us to be in order. But when a document is presented to us which has no identifying mark upon it at all, we are then in the position which we are in now of simply hearing the statement of counsel, which, of course, is not evidence that the document was found in Paris or found somewhere else; and therefore it occurs to me that one way that it might be dealt with would be an affidavit by somebody who knows the facts that this document and any other documents of a similar sort were captured in the archives of the German forces in Paris or elsewhere.
M. FAURE: I could very easily produce before the Tribunal the affidavit which it requests. I say that if we do not have it in this form it is because our habitual procedure is not exactly the same as that which may be followed in the United States. In fact, as the Charter of the Tribunal indicates that the Prosecution was charged with the collection of evidence, we ourselves have authorized magistrates in our service to look for documents in the archives of the police and if the Tribunal wishes I shall ask the police in addition for attestation of the seizure of these documents in the German archives. I shall then ask the Tribunal to allow me to produce this affidavit in a few days’ time, so that I can ask the police for it.